Thomas Traherne,
Hobbism, and the
Seventeenth-Century
Sciences

Traherne and Hobbes and the “Power to perceiv”

An unsigned preface to the anonymous A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation,1 published posthumously in 1699, reports that its author

was a Divine of the Church of England, of a very comprehensive Soul, and very acute Parts, so fully bent upon that Honourable Function in which he was engaged; and so wonderfully transported with the Love of God to Mankind, with the excellency of those Divine Laws which are prescribed to us, and with those inexpressible Felicities to which we are entitled by being created in, and redeemed to, the Divine Image, that he dwelt continually